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Slow Sales

I usually only go a day or two without sales. But it's been 10 days now and nothing. Haven't had this happen in years. And Amazon has raised the price of my top seller and since then it has sold nothing. Anyone else having this experience?

Comments

I noticed a trend. Month before last I sold a certain amount. Last month only half of that. And now half of last month. It has now been 10/11 days since I've had a sale for my Kindle/Paperback. My other books are way down as well. Thank for replying wildwind.

I did find this interesting, Kevin. Might help some others here. Also the site did say Christmas is the Granddaddy of opportunity for book sales. Also August to December best times. Hoping it's true.

January is a great time for books on business,
self-improvement, weight loss/fitness, and devotionals. Because of New
Year’s Resolutions, people are thinking about everything they want
to/need to do for the new year. Over (!) by January 15th. HA

February is a relatively quiet sales month. You
might have some Valentine’s Day related sales, but don’t expect much.
Different in the romance genre? Perhaps.

March – prime load-in month for stores for the Moms,
Dads, Easter, Grads season. In Christian publishing, this was typically
the second-largest sales season, second only to Christmas.

Yeah, those trends listed are dead on for my stuff. To be honest, if it wasn't for the winter seasonal spike, I don't think it would be worth it, the sales from Sep to Dec far outweigh sales for the rest of the year. Not on here though, sadly, it's all from physical stock, or, you've guessed it - Amazon / Kindle. All rather ironic when my Amazon POD listings have their source here on Lulu, and, to boot, are cheaper than the Amazon versions. Maybe it's time the Lulu execs had another massive marketing campaign; last time, over 10 years ago now, Bob made it on to breakfast telly here in the UK and explained how the POD boom had changed everything.

That's just proves the clout of Amazon as opposed to Lulu. I
saw an announcement on Lulu once that it had paid out one million dollars to
authors over a ten year span (and I'm guessing that a huge chunk of that came
from distribution rather than the Lulu bookstore). Just Kindle alone pays out
over 20 million dollars a month. This would explain why, despite prices being
lower on Lulu, the fish don't bite.

Amazon's bookstore constantly tempts you to buy; stuff is
constantly in your face. You're told that customers who bought this also bought
that. And you're told that these two books are often bought together. You're
told that customers who viewed this also viewed that. You're told that based on what you have searched for you might be interested in books x, y and z. And it takes just one
click to buy. It is a bookstore: it sells books. Lulu's bookstore appears to
think it is some other kind of creature.

Yeah, those trends listed are dead on for my stuff. To be honest, if it wasn't for the winter seasonal spike, I don't think it would be worth it, the sales from Sep to Dec far outweigh sales for the rest of the year. Not on here though, sadly, it's all from physical stock, or, you've guessed it - Amazon / Kindle. All rather ironic when my Amazon POD listings have their source here on Lulu, and, to boot, are cheaper than the Amazon versions. Maybe it's time the Lulu execs had another massive marketing campaign; last time, over 10 years ago now, Bob made it on to breakfast telly here in the UK and explained how the POD boom had changed everything.

The same trends are found in traditional publishing as well. My last commercial book appeared around the middle of last October. While overall sales have averaged about 35 copies a day, probably half or more of the total sales in the past year took place in the first two or three months, after which the curve tapered off fairly rapidly, with perhaps only a handful selling any one day.

Maybe it's time the Lulu execs had another massive marketing campaign; last time, over 10 years ago now, Bob made it on to breakfast telly here in the UK and explained how the POD boom had changed everything.

But was he promoting Lulu as a place to buy books, or a place to create books? Normally Lulu only promote the latter. They leave it up to those who create books here to tell people you can buy their books here.

But they possibly also lump in those who spend a lot of money hiring experts to aid them create, publish and market their wares, calling them Indie publishers, which is not really the same as a self-publisher in my mind. The latter being those who just buy a Proof, not spending any more on their product. By Indie it sounds as if often well-known writers set up their own solo publishing house, using an amount of dosh, but taking the risk because they may earn far more than just royalties. And indeed that's just what some are doing. To be honest a few now large publishing houses originated that way.

Back to the original theme: I am glad to say that due to getting a break by doing a spot on a radio show, which has regular listeners of over a 100,000, my oppo and I are currently bucking the trend as it were, selling, we think (those charts which convert rankings to sales are good, but not 100% accurate) around 20 copies a day on Amazon and have done so for the last 5 days. It's a spike which of course cannot last due to the narrow / niche nature of the book, but it's a very welcome spike at this usually dead time of the year.

Ah, but to balance that out, sales of other books have dropped, so the percentage statistics remain the same.

Possibly little do to with it, but worth a thought.

"The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection while at the University of Lausanne in 1896, as published in his first work, Cours d'économie politique. Essentially, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population."